Who You Calling A Jesse?

As December sets in on campus the IT staff get a chance to huddle around Ron Coutts Hall (RCH) and get together to swap some stories along with learn new things at the WatITis conference. I have blogged loads about this in the past as I have enjoyed every single one since they started. It is a great way to find out what the heck is going on this large campus and put some faces to email addresses (not many on twitter, yet).

This year I am presenting on baby steps in an agile world (slides below). It is a slimmed down, more focused version of a presentation I did at Higher Education Web Conference in Milwaukee this past October. I took the feedback (thanks for the feedback folks) and slimed it down, focused on real practical tips for agile techniques, and I think I have a good 30 min presentation. Which leaves 15 minutes for discussion—something requested by the organizing committee.

Since no one will probably do it at the keynote I will set the hashtag now as the obvious #watitis09 (watitis without the 09 is a pretty funny hashtag to follow) and keep the realistic expectation that there will be a hand full of people tweeting ;) Looking forward to the day.

On the way home yesterday I wrote this post in my head about dozen times. Lots buzzing around after some great discussions and some late nights in Milwaukee. HighEdWeb is by far the best conference focused on web technology, strategy, and networking in higher education. It isn’t because of the speakers (although some were simply amazing), it is because it brings together people from the most diverse collection of schools from across North America all with similar problems but different solutions.

Messages I kept hearing:

• Web teams in some schools are already starting to evolve as they grow while other schools still have layers of committees (Web Task Force – WTF – is my favorite) duplicating work and removing accountability. Not many teams of one left out there.
• Usability testing is required, it is not an option. I would slide towards more of ‘usability monitoring’ along with iterative improvements is the way to go. Not many schools are there yet but enough are going there to see a trend starting.
• Engaging your audience using Web 2.0 tools with Web 1.0 thinking doesn’t work. You probably don’t know you are doing it.
• CMS deployments solve one problem, create many others that aren’t as bad as the original problem. No surprise here.
• Problems or challenges: budgets are being slashed, recruitment is getting scary, web initiatives are underfunded even though they could have a big ROI.

There were some extremely entertaining moments around the keynote from the second day. The presenter was well out of touch with the audience, slides were poorly designed and outdated, and his content was poorly delivered. He got mobbed on twitter (and isn’t on twitter himself even though his topic was on using the web to engage your audience) with the outside audience reacting in a funny way. The backchannel was rough on him but honestly if I did that I would expect the same reaction.

As for my presentation, I think it went ok, people seemed to appreciate it. I got totally nervous given how packed the room was though. I am sure they noticed but nothing nasty on twitter ;) In retrospect, I tried to cover too much in a 45 min slot. I could have easily broken it in half and I think people would have got just as much out of it. Project Management is a workshop, a lighter overview is a presentation. Maybe they will let me do that next time. Really looking forward to HighEdWeb2010 or 101010. My slides are here:

The new UW logo continues to create a stir with the request for feedback on the new logo and a couple alternatives. Pretty much immediately after the request went out UW Opinion was lit up with a range of colourful commentary, some useful suggestions, and some posts that are way out to lunch.

With regards to the new logos I don’t have much to offer about any specific design but I still think the staff at UW could do way better. I don’t think they will though as the process is broken (something I mentioned in my post back in July). A post by Sanjay on UW Opinion touches on it as well.

I think a big part of the problem with the logo boils down to an organizational cultural one that speaks to how people value art, communications, and design in this community. Over the years working at UW I have had a chance to work with many talented designers that have been treated as contract staff that are to simply create exactly what they are told. They aren’t seen as authoritative talent that was hired to handle ‘how things look.’

Usually what happens to the designer is they are forced to use bad photos, odd fonts, colours, and layouts as dictated by the client when they know they don’t work together. What it comes down to in design consultant terms, staff groups at UW are the nightmare client that you can’t get away from because it is your full-time job. They aren’t allowed to do what they are hired to do…. and yes, I said staff groups at UW are nightmare clients. I have been on both sides of it and I don’t think people do it intentionally but I do think people in general do not value the skills and expertise of others—particularly design talent.

It is likely that a lot of other higher ed institutions suffer from this organizational culture issue.

What I would ask from the leadership in higher ed in general is to let professionals do their jobs, don’t let them step outside their roles and step on the jobs of others, and understand good design can not be done on the cheap. Otherwise you will have burned out staff that feel overworked and under appreciated—the type of people that shut off and loose the passion for their work.

I should add… a lot innovation, personal growth, and good experience comes when people step outside their defined roles. My point is that people should be challenged to step outside their roles in a more strategic way. It should not just be normal that an admin assistant takes on a co-ordinator role for the admin assistant pay or worse take on the role of a co-ordinator that is already trying to fulfill that role.

One thing that really been highlighted to me by the University of Waterloo logo fun (#uwlogogate) is that committees are overused in higher education and the quality of the work could be suffering. Even if the quality might not improve I can’t see how committee work isn’t contributing to an increase in work load and stress. This happens because (using this current issue as an example) a committee (or a series of committees) appears to be responsible for:

1. requirements, strategy, and execution of the branding work
2. logo research, design, and approval
3. communications planning

How the day to day works is that you have a number of staff from different departments with different reports and interests doing their normal job and working on the branding stuff essentially on the side. Focus is not 100% on the task, it can’t be. The result, a decent logo but one that meets the needs of very specific, unfocused, and likely insular interests.

A project needs to be a real project

What I think is wrong is that a committee of staff with other jobs should be responsible for:

1. high level requirements, strategy, and oversight of project

Then a project team is to do the work, report back on how what they are doing is inline with the vision/values, and get the job done. A project team that is doing it full time reporting to one Project Manager and sharing a common interest.

The project team will have the added advantage of spending enough time on something to develop expertise that it might be missing. It is really hard to be really good at something that you don’t have the time for. It is likely the quality of the work suffers because the expertise just isn’t allowed to develop with the project.

This actually gets really bizarre when you look at things like hiring committees and search committees. The membership is made up of ‘representation’ but not by people that are qualified (or likely) to understand the requirements of a job for which they are hiring someone. Their positions don’t offer them the context or the expertise yet they are drawn together to represent what are arguably irrelevant interests.

That is why I am not arguing for broader consultation on projects (like logo making). That doesn’t work. I think broader consultation on higher level principles is ideal but when it comes to doing the work let the people you are paying to do the work produce the best work they are capable of. If it is truly sub-par work then something is wrong and something needs to be done.

A committee that is tasked with doing real work removes all responsibility and accountability for the quality and delivery of the work.

You can’t apply good project management to a committee

Can you actually apply project management techniques to committee work? I don’t think so. Sure in MS Project you can claim an asset (person) has 20% of their work week for a project but it doesn’t take into account that with one day a week of time you are probably getting 1/3 productivity on that. The inevitable 1/3 of your day getting your mind focused and working, 1/3 doing work, 1/3 for interruptions.

Too much time is spent on updating progress, lingering issues that aren’t solved, politics in the office back in the home department, etc.

Highered needs to create more temporary project teams and less committees

I believe we need to stop using a faculty influenced process and go to a more business focused way of running projects with a twist. The twist being the project has committee oversight that agrees on the goals and the measure of the project is its adherence to the goals (committees can not say things like “moar lazerz”).

This is a rough thought of course… more discussion is welcome and required but in general we need to change how we do projects in higher ed or continue to put out sub-par work and over stress staff in the process.

What is the ideal structure for a web application development team that is using Agile methodologies? What is the process that results in the most bug free development possible? Over the past few weeks I have been documenting and tweaking team roles and process for our front-end development. It has been a lot harder than I thought it would be, especially when you throw co-op students in the mix.

In the past year roles on our team have evolved as we have had to figure out the limitations of our technology, backgrounds, and our skills but I think after about 12 months of a team functioning in a development mode things are pretty much set. What I have found is that you have to adjust certain roles to match people’s strengths and find their comfort level—especially if they are co-op students or recent grads. Once comfortable in their role people start to really shine.

The Web Development team

Every team is a bit different but this is what the Special Projects Group looks like at the moment:

• Design/UX Lead: Manages the front-end design work, participates in development, has responsibility for what is displayed on the screen and how it is displayed – satisfying the requirements set forth by the Client and Project Leads. Interacts with the Project Lead to determine what is ultimately on the screen and how the users interact with the system.
• UI Tester Lead: Design, manage, and execute testing. Collects and consolidates data for the Lead Design/UX.
• UI Designer/testers: Works on designs, incorporates feedback. They also do what would pass as unit testing on the application using a web browser.
• Client Lead: Provides input and has shared authority with Project Lead on screens.
• Project Lead: The person responsible for the project wrt development and satisfying project requirements. Interacts with the Client Lead to determine functionality, business logic, and general interface requirements. Interacts with the Lead Design/UX and Client Lead to develop the front-end requirements.
• Developers: Code the screens.

Like with any web app project and team, there is a creative process group that must meet up with a coding/logical process group. Ideally you throw some usability testing/feedback, client feedback, and a project lead that has sold a particular level of functionality to the client and you get into some fun. The above roles try and address this but they need an integrated process that all roles can work with.

Problems that had to be managed largely had to do with timing

A problem we have had is that coders can’t code a screen until a UI designer/tester has run the screen past a number of people within the client group. That has been cut down to one client lead who has his own process to run it past a larger client stakeholder group. There was another problem with the feedback loop from the client and project leads and when was the best time for them to provide it. This problem is still not fully addressed but hopefully the current process will solve it.

Embracing the issue tracker (or how I love bug reports)

Bug tracking, even the concept of what a bug is, along with having a reliable/useful system was our final problem to overcome. We started with Team Foundation Server then we switched over to Bugzilla and adopted a very religious approach to using it as an issue tracker. This worked out extremely well in providing focus and a task list for coders to pick up. The new problem it has caused is that if you are tracking issues in the system how or why would you use the sticky notes on the wall? Honestly, we are still working on it.

Our process, incorporating bug tracking with sprint planning

The above work flow works really well. What we have done is broken the project into milestones that fit a two week sprint planning process (or a series of planning sessions). The screens are developed quickly with paper, they are discussed, modified, and bounced back and forth in less than 48 hours. From there coding can begin.

We make an effort to switch modes on a screen so that our bug system isn’t overwhelmed. Our team members roles funnel decisions up to a contact point and then allow certain ‘bugs’ or issues to be incorporated in two weeks or less.

Translate agile to your team

Agile doesn’t mean you are infinitely changing things and incorporating feedback. You need to have a cycle that allows you to reach a milestone, provide time to iterate, and move on. You need to be able to classify the feedback and make decisions against the larger vision of what you are building. Where Agile works for us is that it provides an opportunity to catch major problems before too much time to it. Where it fails is when our process doesn’t incorporate the tools at our disposal effectively.

The goal of this process is to avoid being ‘too agile’ where the people in higher positions can cloud the process with mixed expectations and contact points. Using a big wall with sticky notes full of stories and tasks works great but as soon as you introduce bug tracking software it starts to slide a bit. The balance is hard to find but when you do it is worth the short term pain.

There has been a bit of a discussion in the uwebd list about when is the right time to launch a higher ed web site. Thinking that launch is for new sites and re-launch is for re-branding and something you do with care, my first reaction was “why would you launch a new higher web site?” There is still a tendency in higher education to launch new designs on the campus community from time to time and I think, in modern web time, that is nuts.

Think of the people that use your web site, how they use it, how long they have been using, and who the redesign is for? Are they the same people? Flipping the switch on large changes (navigation, content, etc) is, at an informed guess level, expensive. Every day users are disrupted, new users don’t notice, and the occasional student user likely will think a refresh gets in the way and ask why does their online course environment still suck when you obviously have time to make changes on this site?

Major website overalls on public sites are a waste of resources with little ROI

Here is a generalized version of redesign process in higher ed:

• Someone says ‘we need a fresh look’ (usually fueled by marketing folks or recruitment ‘studies’)
• Committee is formed to look at ‘revamping’ the home page
• 6-24 months pass with around a dozen people on a committee discussing designs
• assumptions are based on personal preferences about what people want to see on the web
• Someone brings up implementing or changing the CMS, another committee is formed to look at that in parallel
• ‘three’ designs are chosen, CMS’s are investigated
• In a perfect world usability studies occur
• In the practical world, ‘previews’ are given to key politically sensitive areas on campus
• After some news releases and committee discussions at various levels some last minute ‘additions’ to menus or content are made for the flavour of the month
• page is launched
• users freak out, some love it, some hate it, all have to learn the new navigation to get on with what they have to do online
• more additions are required for political reasons

Have I gone through this? Yes, twice in seven years. I changed jobs just before my third time came around. In the 15 years or so of a web presence for most schools I would imagine they have done this an average of 4 times with the range between 3 and 8.

This cycle plays out just about everywhere in higher education and I think it largely because we ask each other what we did and copy/tweak/repeat. My guess is that the investment into this type of cycle is around:

• at least 3 FTE of ~45K salaries initially
• into the dozens of FTE for campus wide change
• if you buy a CMS ~100-500K plus more FTE

There is also a cost in disrupting people’s work flows (staff tend to have click patterns to things they need everyday, moving that causes cardiac conditions to worsen), committee time, and the other things that don’t get done.

What do you get back on that investment? Nothing. I don’t believe for one second that students decide to go to a particular higher education institution because their website looked cool, modern, etc. If high school students say that they are just telling you what you want to hear (teenagers do that? really?). Finding the information they need about what it is like to go to school there, programs, the city, the cost, etc would influence them but not a picture of a researcher up to their waste in sludge (grad students that care already know who that it and what they do).

Incremental changes by design and invest in content: clear, concise, informative

I am not saying you should never freshen up your website. You most certainly should but it should never require a re-launch unless you re-branding or something significant. Slight changes to navigation, content, colours, etc can occur without throwing it all out and starting fresh. Your previous design can’t be that bad (if it is, replace it by all means) but it is likely looking pre-web 2.0 or worse, way overboard on web 2.0ness. So clean it up, design change, but don’t do a demolition unless you absolutely have to.

Take your experience with other websites. If you have to be there to find something do you care what it looks like? No. You only care if you can’t find the information you need or if Google didn’t get you to a quality source on the first search. Students, staff, faculty, friends, etc all come to a higher education website not to hang out but they come to find out specific information. If they can find it and it is readable and your site isn’t some over designed 10px paradise with animated gifs they will have a positive experience.

I do believe things like HTML 5 and Microformats places more focus on the content then the look as the content becomes more portable. More and more people do not see your content in a look and feel that you have 100% control over (you never had 100% control) so why focus on that? Make it so your content is structured properly and relevant. Search engines will like you more as will the people using them.

Update: Smashing posted an Article on Feb 3rd on what being clear and effective in communication on the web means. Facebook offers a great example of continuous improvement in design without relaunching anything (the new design was launched once but changed many times) over a period of 5 years

Where design efforts should be focused: on the tools students use everyday

…and that is a whole other blog post. Fact is that higher education rarely spends time on the experience in web based applications that students, staff, faculty must use everyday. Why is that? I have some thoughts that I will post later ;)

Higher education institutions need to make far more clear separations between the core business that occur on a higher education campus. Research and education isn’t the same thing and neither is training. The public seems to blur education and training as do the institutions themselves. Institutions have made changes, smudging the definitions/roles, for funding reasons and higher education has failed the public in not even trying to explain it’s role (or doing such a bad job at it they might as well not have been trying).

Research is about the pursuit of something for the sake of it

Research can be seen as the endless pursuit of something for the sake of the research (generalization yes, but for the love all things we need to talk on more simpler terms in higher education). Research in Higher Education terms is gaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Spin off discoveries usually appear and the research projects may iterate many times before it becomes something tangible or it may just stop. Generally it generates revenue over a much longer term. It may develop expertise as well. It can be value-added to education but it is separate, it is expensive, and creating an environment for a wild range of research to occur is the whole reason a higher education institution exists.

Education is about learning how to learn

To an undergrad student in higher education is about learning how to learn. That includes skills like assessing the quality of a source, finding quality sources quickly, and packaging up your argument/research in a way that the target audience can understand it. The truth that no one seems to admit is that, except in special cases, it really doesn’t matter where you get your first four years done. Undergrad is generic, grad school is a different story.

As you move to graduate work you are applying that skill and developing expertise. That is where research plays a huge role in my mind. You can only develop certain type of expertise in a field if you are allowed to dedicated your time researching it. Higher Education has students so that there will be people to utilize the infrastructure and continue to pursue knowledge in a protected environment (what protected means to me – safe from dramatic government, corporate, or economic oversight).

That isn’t for everyone and far fewer students go on to graduate studies then enter the process out of high school. That is good. The skills are transferable to many jobs in the real world and civilization as a whole benefits from having critical, efficient thinkers that can communicate outside of the academic environment. The truly dedicated move on up the rungs of academia and hopefully have the passion that be shared with students in the future. Sadly I think many loose a certain passion and hide in higher education but they are exceptions.

Skills training is for corporations or is it?

Skills training for a specific job is something that I don’t think works well within Higher Education as it is currently designed. In Ontario we had clear division between College and University where one was skills training and the other was essentially academic training. The government and the public fails (or chooses not) to see the difference in practical terms. Pressure mounts on Universities to train students for real jobs and Colleges have lifted their educational profile by teaching academic courses.

I think Colleges have made the transition towards ‘academia light’ better than Universities have towards skills training and largely because the underlying culture conflict. Universities are run by academics that were trained as academics with the belief Higher Education just exists to pursue knowledge and the value to community is assumed, while College is run as a business. I think Higher Education shouldn’t be exclusively about the academics and it should stop trying to mix the two and be honest about what is being offered.

Globally we see specialty schools doing specific skills training for safety, nursing assistants, etc. There is a market for more specific training everyone and generally Higher Education (besides Colleges in Ontario) have not taken a lot of interest in exploited the market. Instead they try to train skills as well as have students explore their education. I think that is not being true to what the experience is supposed to be about and has created some bizarre dependency between Higher Ed and many companies.

Next: How can staff in higher ed help these three areas?

Part of the Higher Education revolution.

Note: This is all based on observations, experiences, thoughts, etc from working in Higher education for 8 years and being a student for another 5 in undergrad at two different schools. I did my Msc and my wife did her grad work through distance education for the last 3 years. My stint as President of the Staff Association at U of Waterloo is over and I find myself all fired up about how Higher Education needs to change. I am also really tired of seeing academics research problems and hiding that research in journals were only other academics will find it.

With the economy slowing (or grinding to a halt) mixed with credit being hard to find, higher education institutions might be facing a perfect storm that could shake poorly run institutions to the ground. Students with parents that have the money to pay for their education might be hard pressed to do so, jobs to pay for tuition might be harder to find, loans outside of state assistance might dry up, money for research might be cut, and public along with private donations will likely be even harder to get. This all spells trouble for organizations that wish to maintain a status quo. For those looking to fix some big issues the climate could be ideal.

What are the biggest issues facing higher ed both with regards to the organizational structure and the adoption of technology? My list is short (it is hard to keep short):

1. higher education has an identity crisis – a religious battle is going on internally between the ‘leave me alone, things are fine’ crowd and the ‘wow this is messed up, why are we here?’ crowd
2. the culture has created processes that make change slow and ineffective make sure that any change is painful
3. young talent is defeated by a management class that doesn’t know what management is (and I blame academics for that)

I have already posted my thoughts on how to deal with inefficient committees and the fun that surrounds item 2 and some of 3 above. The first is the illness with the following points the symptoms… I think. I want to explore my thoughts as to why we (higher education) are here and what we can do about it (besides better meetings, time on task tracking, etc). This is a series of blog posts as I don’t want to post some rant in big essay form.

Next post: What are research, educational, and training activities in Higher ed?

Karlyn Morissette has set her ’biggest problem in Higher Education’ on the total inefficacy of higher education institution and how that is enshrined in the culture. I agree. From my viewpoint, Staff and Faculty in Higher Education spend far too much time in committees that have no mandate or authority (or even an agenda or a chair). The "building of consensus" for every little thing paralyzes progress and forces what I see as a continuous pursuit towards mediocrity.

Examples given in Karlyn’s post we see every day in higher ed (committees, endless pursuit of a pet project). The problem gets a lot worse when you look at some of the typical decision making processes that have layers of committees that stretch over months with 12 or so people on each of them. In the case of grad admissions or research funding, committees don’t make decisions but instead push an application up to another committee to consider. Finally someone might make a decision but usually that some one is in no position to make a proper decision as they have no idea what they are deciding on. They just sign the paper and move on.

Time is money except in Academia where time builds authority

To me this boils down to a lack of appreciation for people’s time (at least in Canada, specifically Ontario). It is understandable from the academic viewpoint, you have been in school all your life. Getting a phd is a long process and that process works. An academic’s time has little value over simply having their presence on campus as their entire purpose is to think and do research. Their work hours are open, this is their life. Unless the committees get in the way of their research or teaching there is no real cost.

However, staff time is different. At a guess, historically higher ed (being run by academics) hired clerical staff for clerical tasks. They weren’t required to make decisions as the academics were in charge. With 1000 or so students that might have made sense. As institutions grew they hired more professional staff. Professional staff hired more professional staff to help manage the business of the institution. These professionals are often more skilled and necessary to ensure a level of service. However, academics ensured the committee processes remained in place and that they had final say. This does nothing to empower staff and the skilled professionals that couldn’t accept that left higher ed in the 80’s (at Waterloo anyway). Larger, older institutions seemed to simply professionalize phd/academic roles which laid down the academic committee process that leaves decisions with academic chairs and Deans.

Note: The evolution of academia in North America and beyond is a thesis topic methinks… so my abridged assumptions shall end here ;)

The culture was enshrined over the 1990’s and the insane cut backs that higher education had to deal with. New staff didn’t come in, culture took over. I would assume that the reality of ‘it is easier to beg forgiveness’ always has been present but I found when I started working in Higher Ed that it was the only way to get anything new done. Sadly that approach is wrong (most of the time). It is wrong because sure you change things but you don’t have lasting change. You simply embarrass other people and get shut out of any future process. On the rare occasion you succeed in sparking lasting change but you have still marginalized yourself and others to get there. That isn’t a good way to do things.

Identify value, document process, and stop doing things that don’t need to get done

In order to have lasting change you need to participate in the process, ask questions, understand why people fear change, and give them a big nudge in the right direction. Lead by example, act professional, and be kind to those that will attack you for what you doing. It isn’t easy but in the medium term you will see change. After 8 years working in Higher Education I am convinced that no amount of positive change is worth treating people poorly. If someone makes it impossible to do anything then bulldoze them but I doubt you will have to fight the bully if you build support by other means.

There are a few simple things you can do that borrow from the world of Project Management, Drucker, Roberts Rules, and others:

• Ensure a committee meeting always has an agenda
• Identify the Chair, support the Chair in keeping the meeting on track
• Identify who makes decisions and what is required in order to have a decision made
• Identify who will carry out the decisions
• Do not take things personally even in the face of obvious personal attacks
• Track your time on task, report it to your manager on a weekly basis
• If you are working on a project, get agreement on what ‘finished’ means (open ended projects are probably the worst specific waste in higher ed)
• Identify what you expect to get out of the project
• Figure out what doesn’t need to get done and stop doing it

All these things help identify value in what you are others that are working with you are doing. That value will help make people feel better. If they feel better about what they are doing they are more likely to take risks on the current project or one in the future.

Organizational waste, inefficiencies, etc will not be fixed over night in higher education. But making an effort now (especially in the face of cuts) will help in the future.